Gods of the Ancient World: a list and general information about them

Researchers of the past argue that the history of mankind does not know any people who denied the existence of certain higher forces, guiding them on the earthly, and sometimes even afterlife. Representations about them changed with the development of civilization, and on their basis numerous religious cults were formed, both preserved to this day and gone to the depths of centuries. Let us recall only some of the gods of the Ancient World, originating, according to the generally accepted definition, in the prehistoric period and limited to the 5th century, when the world entered the era of the early Middle Ages.

Ancient Sumerian deities

To start a conversation about the heroes and gods of the Ancient World follows the story of the religious views of the Sumerians who lived in the territory of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and created in the beginning of the IV millennium BC. E. The first world civilization. Their beliefs and the mythology generated by them were based on the worship of the numerous gods-demiurgeons-the creators of the world and all that exists in it, and also the spirits who patronized people in various aspects of their life.

These are probably the most ancient gods in the world, of which quite full information has been preserved. The chief place among them was occupied by the god An (or Anu). According to Sumerian mythology, he was one of the demiurges who created the world, and existed before the earth was separated from the sky. Among other celestials he enjoyed such indisputable authority that the Sumerians always portrayed him presiding over the councils of the gods, who arranged them for solving the most important issues.

Among the Sumerian gods-patrons, Marduk is most famous, with the name of which the foundation and further development of one of the largest cities of the Ancient World ─ Babylon is connected. It was believed that it was to him the city owes its rise and prosperity. It is characteristic that with the growth of the ancient metropolis, wider scale assumed the worship of his patron. In the pantheon of the Sumerian gods, Marduk was given the same place as Jupiter among the ancient Greek gods.

Rejected passion

As an example of Sumerian mythology, it is appropriate to quote one of the stories about the Goddess Ishtar, who successfully patronized such seemingly incompatible things as love and war. The legend that has come down to us tells how the heart of a goddess once burned with love for the brave hero Gilgamesh, who returned from a military campaign, in which he won thanks to her patronage.

For the service, Ishtar wished the hero to become her husband, but was refused because Gilgamesh had heard not only of her innumerable love affairs, but also of the way she turned bored men into spiders, wolves, rams, and other dumb creatures. Of course, he did not get away with it, because what could be more terrible than the revenge of a rejected woman?

Heavenly bull

Enraged Ishtar went to heaven to her parents - the supreme god Anu and his wife Anto, who told about her humiliation. In order to take revenge on the offender, she persuaded the old people to create for her a terrible Heavenly bull, capable of destroying Gilgamesh. Otherwise, the obstinate daughter threatened to lift all the dead from the graves and give them the human race to be eaten.

Knowing from experience that arguing with my daughter is useless, An and Antu fulfilled her request. On the ground, the goddess came back with the bull, who, having drunk all the water in the Efrat river first, began to devour the unhappy Sumerians. And would come to this end of the ancient civilization, but fortunately, the same Gilgamesh arrived, who, together with his friend Enkid, overcame the monster and brought his carcass to the sacrifice of other, more decent deities.

The legend ends with the fact that Ishtar, standing at the walls of the ancient city of Uruk, curses the obstinate Gilgamesh and, having gathered all Sumerian harlots, bitterly mourns with them the ruined bull. Why for this she needed representatives of the ancient profession ─ history is silent.

Disappearing civilization

It remains only to add that the pantheon of the gods of the Ancient World, revered by the Sumerians, is very extensive. To the names already mentioned, we add only the most famous names: Anunnaki, Adad, Bel, Dumuzi, Inanna, Tiamat, Tammuz, Sumukan, Sina and Zarpanita.

In the middle of the II millennium BC. E. The State of Sumer gave way to the power of the Babylonian Empire, and the Sumerian language, as colloquial, became obsolete. Nevertheless, for almost 2 thousand years on it were written literary works, some of which were discovered during archaeological excavations.

Gods of Egypt

The history of the Ancient World is inseparable from the desire of people to know the world around them, sometimes frightening and filled with impenetrable secrets for them. Evidence of the attempts of the ancient Egyptians to understand its structure is the creation of a large pantheon of gods, which became a product of their imagination and personified for them natural forces.

A characteristic feature of the religion of the ancient Egyptians was the belief in the divine origin of the pharaohs upon which their unlimited power was based. Both the heavenly masters and their earthly governors were not always friendly to people, and therefore both of them had to be propitiated not only by prayers and praises, but also by sacrifices, the nature of which varied depending on who they were meant for.

The gods of the Ancient World and the myths that tell about them always represented a bright page of world culture. Not an exception and the vast pantheon of gods born on the banks of the Nile. Historians number about 2 thousand of its representatives, however, no more than 100 of them enjoyed universal worship, while the worship of the rest was of a local nature.

It is interesting to note, with the change in the layout of political forces in the country, the hierarchical position that certain gods occupied also changed. The history of the Ancient World, and Egypt in particular, is full of turmoil and turmoil, the result of which were frequent changes of rulers, which radically changed the status of the gods especially revered by them. Meanwhile from the general pantheon it is possible to allocate a number of characters, whose "rating" was invariably high throughout the history of the Ancient Egyptian civilization.

The top of the divine hierarchy

This is primarily the creator of the entire earthly god, Amon-Ra, also known under the names Amun or Atum. It was he who was considered the father of all the pharaohs. Sometimes in the imagination of the Egyptians Amon-Ra took a female form and was then called the goddess Amunet. This god-transvestite was especially revered in Thebes, which for a long time was the capital of the state. Usually he was depicted as a man in royal dress and crown decorated with feathers, less often in the form of a goose or ram.

Slightly inferior to him in popularity was the god of fertility and the afterlife of Osiris, whose list of closest relatives evoked the most profound respect for him. As the son of the god of the earth, Hebe and the goddess of the sky, Nut, he took his sister Isis, the patroness of fertility, motherhood, health and sea voyages (marriages in that era were not forbidden). Having inherited the title of supreme lord over time, he taught the Egyptians to cultivate the land, observe the laws and honor the gods.

Treachery and love in Egyptian mythology

However, like many ancient gods of the peoples of the world, Osiris on the road to his greatness has undergone many different hardships and ordeals. It all started with the fact that the god of the desert Seth, who personified an evil beginning, planned to kill him and himself to take the place of the supreme lord. His insidious design, he carried out quite an original.

Making a golden trunk of a suitable size and inviting guests, among whom was Osiris, the villain announced that he would give this jewel to someone who could fit comfortably in it. Everyone began to try, and when the turn came to Osiris, Seth slammed the lid of the trunk, tied it with ropes and threw it into the Nile, on the waves of which he swam unknown.

Upon learning of the loss of her husband, Isis went in search of him and found a chest with his faithful at the Phoenician shore. But her joy proved premature. Followed on the heels of Seth ahead of Isis and in front of her hacked the body of her husband to pieces, scattering them all over Egypt.

But the villain had a bad idea of who he was dealing with - the goddess collected most of the remains of Osiris, made a mummy from them, so well that soon conceived from her son Gore, who later became a hunting god and portrayed as a man with a falcon head. Irresistible, Gore defeated Seth and helped his mother raise the mummy of his father.

Other inhabitants of the ancient Egyptian pantheon

Let us recall some other names of the gods of the Ancient World, who lived on the banks of the Nile. This is primarily the god Shu. He and his wife Tefnut were the first celibates created by the supreme god Atum and initiated the division of the sexes. Shu was considered the god of sunlight and air. He was portrayed as a man in a headdress with a train, while his wife had the shape of a lioness.

Another god of the Ancient World, considered the embodiment of the sun, was the supreme ruler of Ra. His images in the form of a man with a falcon head, crowned with a solar disk, are often found on the walls of Egyptian temples of that ancient era. A special feature of Ra was his ability to be born every day from the sacred cow of Nut and, having made his way through the celestial vault, plunge into the realm of the dead, in order to repeat everything again the next morning.

It is worth noting that Osiris, discussed above, except Isis's wife, had another sister named Nephthys. It was in Egyptian mythology that the rather gloomy role of the goddess of death and mistress of the kingdom of the dead fell out. From her underground possessions, she appeared only at sunset and all night she rode the sky in her black boat. Her image can often be seen on the lids of the sarcophagi, where she appears in the image of a winged woman.

Not a complete list of Egyptian gods can be continued by such names as Sekhmet, Bastet, Nepid, Toth, Menhit, Ptah, Hator, Shezemu, Khons, Hekhet and many others. Each of them has its own history and its image, imprinted on the walls of the temples and interior spaces of the pyramids.

The world of the gods of Ancient Greece

Ancient mythmaking, which had a tremendous impact on the formation of the whole European culture, reached its highest point of flourishing in the Ancient Hellas. The origin of the world and gods in ancient Greece, as well as in Egypt, was not accidental. Creation of all things was attributed to the supreme creator, whose role in this case was performed by Zeus. He was the king of all other gods, the lord of lightning and the personification of the boundless sky. In Roman mythology, which became a continuation of the Greek, this image corresponds to Jupiter, endowed with the same properties and inherited the external characteristics of its ancestor. Zeus' wife was the goddess Hera, the patroness of motherhood, protecting women during childbirth.

A characteristic feature of the Greek pantheon of the gods is its elitism. Unlike the characters of the Egyptian myths, in Ancient Hellas there were only 12 celes who lived on the top of Mount Olympus and descended to the earth only in case of emergency. At the same time, the status of the other deities was significantly lower, and they played a secondary role.

It is worth noting another characteristic feature of the Greek and Roman gods - they were taken to represent only in human form, giving perfection to the features of each. In the modern world, the gods of ancient Greece are well known, because their marble sculptures are an unattainable example of ancient art.

The Elite of the Ancient Greek Pantheon

To all that was somehow connected with the war and accompanied by bloodshed, two deities were commanded, in the view of the ancient Greeks. One of them was Ares, who had unbridled temper and enjoyed himself with spectacles of hot fights. Zeus did not like him for being too bloodthirsty and suffered on Olympus only because he was his son. Sympathy Thunderer was on the side of his own daughter Athena ─ the goddess of a just war, wisdom and knowledge. Appearing on the battlefield, she pacified her inappropriately divorced brother. In Roman mythology, it corresponds to Minerva.

The world of heroes and gods of Ancient Greece is difficult to imagine without Apollo ─ the god of sunlight, the expert healer and patron of the muses. His name became a household name thanks to sculptural images that embodied the standard of male beauty. A few centuries later, in the Romans Apollo embodied in the image of Phoebe.

The standard of female beauty, in her perception by the ancient Greeks, is the goddess of love Aphrodite, which was the prototype of the Roman Venus. Born from sea foam, the beautiful woman took under her protection love, marriage, fertility and spring. It is quite curious that, despite the abundance of the most enviable suitors, she gave the heart to the chromonous Hephaestus (in the Romans he was called Vulcan) to the god of blacksmithing, preferring a hard working and proud husband to handsome men from the top of Olympus.

In order not to offend any of the gods of the Ancient World, revered once on the shores of Hellas, let us recall the patroness of the moon, fertility, hunting and female chastity Artemis (from the Romans Diana), the ruler of the kingdom of the dead Hades, the god of the seas Poseidon (aka Neptune) and the reckless drunkard, god Wine and fun ─ Dionysus, better known by his Roman name Bacchus.

Since the past centuries the number of admirers of this god has not only not decreased, but also grows every year, we will devote a few lines to him. It is known that Dionysus was born as a result of the secret love of Zeus and the Theban Tsarevna Semely. The jealous wife of the thunderer, the goddess Hera, resorting to cunning, ruined the passion of her lascivious husband, but could not destroy the child hated by her.

Having resorted to the help of Hermes ─ the god of travelers and a connoisseur of human souls, ─ Zeus secretly from his wife handed over his son to nymphs for the upbringing of the life-giving forces of nature. When Dionysus grew up and turned from a pink-cheeked child into a beautiful young man, they gave him a vine and taught him how to prepare a fruit drink from her fruit. Since then, the illegitimate son of Zeus has become a god of wine and fun. Residents of Greece worshiped him, decorating themselves with garlands of grape leaves and singing hymns in his honor.

The beginning of a new era

These 12 celibates do not limit the entire list of the gods of the Ancient World, once sung by Greek poets, who brought to us the unique spirit of ancient myths. But only they became inhabitants of Olympus, their images inspired outstanding sculptors and painters of subsequent epochs, which brought world-wide popularity to these gods, hidden from us by the thickness of centuries.

The history of the Ancient World, as it is commonly believed, culminated in the fall of Rome in 476 and the abdication of his last emperor, Romulus Augustus. From that moment the world moved to a new stage of its development ─ the early Middle Ages. Gradually, not only the way of the old life left in oblivion, but also the gods who gave birth and protected it.

In place of their numerous pantheon came a single God - the Creator and Creator of all things. The cult of the former celestials was declared dark paganism, and its followers were subjected to no less severe persecutions than those which they had recently arranged against Christians.